The end of The Guard, once hailed as the shield of South Korea and envied by many, was pitiful.

Only a handful of people had gathered.

A man stood on a podium, giving a speech.

“Those who were supposed to protect us abandoned us to save themselves. They’re not planning a counterattack. No, they’ve simply left us behind. They are the stain of this era. I am here to remove that stain and build a new future in its place.”

His face looked familiar.

Was it Park Sang-min?

The self-important congressman?

I hadn’t seen him since he had been working with Je Pung-ho. As usual, people like him seemed to live long.

Grumbling voices began to rise from the crowd.

“That guy’s the one who insisted on tearing down the abandoned school building.”

“He must be trying to make a show of it. There’s an election coming up, isn’t there?”

“The National Assembly election? The one where they’re electing 500 representatives?”

“Half the population’s gone, but the number of leeches keeps growing. Who are they even for?”

Half the people criticized Park Sang-min, while the other half seemed to be his supporters.

“What do you even know?”

“Shut up, you useless relic.”

“The more representatives we have, the more rights the people get. Don’t you know that basic principle?”

“Yeah, blame the Gukwiwon who abandoned you. You won’t dare say a word to those holding your leash.”

Park Sang-min observed the scene from a distance before concluding his speech.

“This filthy era will end. A new age will begin. I, Park Sang-min, will run with all my strength to open that new age with you.”

When Park Sang-min left in his car, half the already meager crowd dispersed as well.

The desolate scene, with sand-laden winds blowing through, now held only about twenty people.

They all looked older than me.

Most were in their forties, some even in their fifties.

I couldn’t find anyone younger than me, not even anyone my age.

Still holding onto a faint hope, I searched the crowd for a woman.

Was Kim Daram here?

She was one of the reasons I accepted Woo Min-hee’s invitation.

I thought she might show up.

This place was as important to her as it was to me.

Others may call our mentor a scammer, but I owe him a debt of gratitude.

The same goes for Kim Daram.

Jang Ki-young treated the children of wealthy families and orphans like us with the same fairness.

He never looked down on us for not having parents, nor did he give us any disadvantage because of it.

I’ve always been grateful for that.

Other instructors weren’t like him.

But Kim Daram didn’t show up today.

Neither did Baek Seung-hyun, who had tried to drag me down using her name.

“…”

Two small purposes had failed.

If even one of them had appeared, I might have resolved some of my long-standing questions.

Next to the school stood a small memorial hall.

It was Jang Ki-young’s memorial.

I didn’t understand why they placed a memorial for someone still alive next to the school, but now I had a vague idea.

This was Woo Min-hee’s doing.

Her pathological sense of drama added flair to the occasion.

On the first page of the visitor’s log, the name of the event’s organizer was written in unnecessarily elegant handwriting:

[Woo Min-hee]

Other names, of instructors faintly remembered, and a few seniors, followed.

Altogether, there were fewer than ten names.

I became the tenth, signing my name in the log.

“…”

I hesitated for a moment.

Should I write "Park Gyu"?

It felt right to use my full name here, both formally and personally, as a show of respect for the deceased.

But an inexplicable whim strongly urged me to choose differently.

The fact that no one was guarding the memorial also emboldened me.

Slowly and respectfully, I left my mark in the log of the still-living deceased:

[Professor]

Perhaps this name would resonate more deeply with my mentor, who was already dead in all but body.

After all, it marked his most shining moment—the one he had fought to achieve against all odds.

Nearby, I overheard a conversation between middle-aged men.

“Jang said he had a trump card to stop the school’s demolition. What do you think it was? He claimed it would succeed.”

“No idea. But whatever anyone says, Jang Dae-wi was a patriot. He stayed loyal to the country to the end. Even when he was embroiled in lawsuits and received scouting offers from China, he flatly refused. You won’t find another person like him.”

Whatever his faults, Jang Ki-young had more respect and admiration than someone like Lee Sang-hoon.

Not that I’m saying this as a favored student.

“Please step back. The demolition will begin shortly.”

Amid distant gunfire, people gathered.

Some nodded politely at me, but I couldn’t recognize them.

Their faces lingered vaguely in my memory, but the distance between us felt insurmountable, making conversation futile—a hollow echo of past connections.

The countdown began, and soon, explosives planted throughout the school erupted with thunderous booms.

The dirt and debris enveloped the courtyard and classrooms where I had spent three years, swallowing them whole.

Perhaps, at this moment, my mentor—who could be considered the school’s founder—would meet his eternal end as well.

I silently offered my respects to both the school and my mentor, mourning a chapter of time that would never return, before leaving.

The return journey was by armored vehicle.

Unlike the soldiers in the helicopter, those in the armored vehicle were more talkative.

“You were a hunter, right? What’s it like standing in front of a monster?”

“Same as anyone would feel. You want to run away and give up.”

“Do you know Kang Han-min or Na Hye-won?”

“Not well. When you have 1,200 classmates, it’s possible to never even meet some of them.”

One officer, who had been silently observing, turned to me.

“Doesn’t living in a place like this make you depressed?”

“Well, it’s something you just have to overcome.”

“I’ve heard of freelance hunters. The pay isn’t great, but it’s enough to scrape by. With that, you could live near the harbor in a decent place instead of somewhere like this.”

It took me a moment to realize he was expressing concern for me.

The officer handed me something.

“This is from Director Woo Min-hee. She asked me to give it to you.”

It was a small notebook, the size of a palm.

“She said it was your mentor’s keepsake and thought it should go to you.”

The notebook, worn to the point that its leather cover was falling apart, was filled with bold, precise handwriting that covered every page.

The first page featured an old-fashioned drawing of a dragon alongside an inscription in hanja:

[Even if this body breaks, I will protect my homeland.]

It was unmistakable—Jang Ki-young’s handwriting.

He must have scribbled something with that dried-out pen in the lab.

I thanked the officer and got off the armored vehicle.

The soldiers waved at me. They were kind-hearted people.

The journey back to my bunker was long.

I had intentionally contacted Woo Min-hee from 12 kilometers away to avoid revealing my location.

Maybe I should’ve made it only 3 kilometers.

At least I had one reliable ally.

“Defender’s sister, you there?”

“The ribs you gave me were amazing! Best I’ve ever had.”

“Can you scout the area around my location? I’ll send the coordinates.”

“Of course!”

With her help, I walked the desolate road back to my territory.

The familiar, desolate landscape greeted me as always.

I opened the bunker door, threw myself onto the mattress, and exhaled deeply.

“…Hah.”

It felt like a lot had happened, but now that I was home, it all seemed to slip away like sand through my fingers.

The only thing I could recall was how good it felt to wake up to the morning sunlight.

I thought about browsing the internet but ended up lying motionless for over thirty minutes.

What finally roused me was the sound of my K-Walkie-Talkie.

Personal Identifier: REDMASK

It was Woo Min-hee.

She had been nowhere to be seen in Incheon, so why was she contacting me now?

I briefly considered ignoring it but eventually dragged myself up to answer.

“Woo Min-hee?”

“Senior!”

Her voice was brimming with an unsettling enthusiasm.

“Jang Ki-young mentioned you!”

“What did he say?”

“Before he died, he had a seizure—he soiled himself—and in the middle of that chaos, he kept shouting your callsign! Professor! Professor!”

Her voice, dripping with mockery and disdain, was an insult to my mentor.

Despite his flaws, Jang Ki-young was not someone she had the right to disparage.

In my mind, I reconstructed his final moments.

The lab staff must have strapped him into a convertible chair meant for surgeries and injected the fatal dose into his veins.

Until then, my mentor sat motionless, staring blankly ahead like a dead man.

But just as the poison reached his heart, ready to stop its beat, he ripped through the restraints of leather and steel with ease, standing tall.

The staff gathered around him, armed with electric batons and firearms, wary of any potential threat.

But my mentor wasn’t looking at them.

He was gazing at a different scene—the school he had built, the shabby memorial beside it, and me, hesitating over the guestbook.

Then he saw the four syllables written in the log:

[Professor]

In that moment, he felt an inexplicable urge and roared like a tiger.

“Professor!”

I reached for the notebook tossed in the corner of my mattress.

It was filled with strategies for dealing with different types of monsters, plans, positions, and ideas for more effective weapons.

Honestly, it wasn’t very practical—too flashy and pointless in many areas.

As I flipped through the pages, I wondered how he could fill every page with such outdated and unrealistic fantasies.

How had someone like him been our instructor?

Maybe that’s why Jang Ki-young demanded perfection from us.

He knew his vague dreams required the best actors or artists to bring them to life.

But his imagination was too thin to shape reality.

Who could’ve guessed that Kang Han-min, whom he considered the least capable, would one day reshape the entire framework of the world?

And yet, objectively speaking, I, Park Gyu, am the one best suited to bring his absurd visions to life.

The final page seemed to confirm this, as it depicted a weapon that tied me to him:

An advanced axe design he had envisioned.

“Seriously, Instructor?”

Unintentionally, I muttered aloud.

The axe had a rocket booster attached to its end.

[Rocket-Propelled Impact Enhancer]

Was this inspired by the robot animations popular during his youth?

A faint smile crossed my lips as I stared at the axe, imagining the childlike wonder behind it.

“…Huh?”

Something felt off.

The shadowy shading on the axe handle had been cut away, as if something had been stuck there.

I peeled it off.

It wasn’t ordinary paper.

It was a resonance test sheet.

The same black sheet as mine and Suer’s, pinned to the wall.

But this one was different—it wasn’t black.

It was white.

A pure, dazzling white.

I closed the notebook and reconsidered my mentor’s final moments.

In the brutal experiment he had proposed himself, Jang Ki-young had been chosen by the divine.

Like Kang Han-min or Na Hye-won, he had gained insight into the fabric of reality.

At that moment, he understood everything—his monumental success and his inescapable dark fate.

He likely knew he could never escape his role as a test subject.

But now, he had the power to change his circumstances, to break free of his restraints and teach his mocking disciples a sharp lesson.

I knew he wouldn’t.

He was a soldier, a patriot, and as harsh on himself as he was on others.

He must have accepted his predetermined fate quietly, knowing it was for the good of the country he had sworn to protect.

Still, the decision couldn’t have come easily.

He must have been aware of his daughter waiting in the hallway, hoping he would call her name.

Until the very end, Jang Ki-young struggled between duty and personal desire.

Even his anger at Woo Min-hee and the Gukwiwon must have weighed on him.

Ultimately, he chose passive resistance—silent death.

Why he called out my callsign in his final moments, I’ll never know.

Not his daughter, his wife, Kang Han-min, or even my name—just my callsign.

After much thought, I came up with a clumsy answer:

Perhaps he wanted to give his favorite student one last lesson.

“Professor!”

To remind those of us who are unchosen that there’s still an “almost” ahead of us.

*

That night, I dreamed.

In the monochrome dream, I was a teenager still brimming with youthful energy, and my mentor stood before me, his thirties marked by a faint trace of vitality.

“Park Gyu! This is how you use an axe!”

We sparred with unrelenting intensity, my mentor and I.

To the point of utter exhaustion.

I struggled to follow the swift trajectories of his strikes, blocking his attacks and retaliating in kind with similar movements.

“Take a break!”

Jang Ki-young, tireless and brimming with vigor as he had been in those days, turned his head sharply to the side, leaving me gasping for breath.

His tiger-like eyes flashed with unmistakable anger.

“Kang Han-min! What are you doing?!”

Then, Jang Ki-young looked back at me.

He smiled.